First Look: Microsoft Office for Mac 2008

Ars takes a quick look at the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. A universal …

Introduction

The subject of Microsoft Office for Mac has the potential to be a touchy one with Apple fans. There is a contingent of Mac users for whom Microsoft is the enemy, and any alternative to their products is the right choice. For many others though, especially those of us who live and work in cross-platform environments, the reality is that Microsoft's Office suite is the de facto standard, and life is a lot easier if everyone's files play nice.

Regardless of where you stand on the Office versus iWork question, there's no denying that Redmond has has churned out some pretty impressive and very Mac-like software. Office 98 was a fine package, and Internet Explorer 5 gave the Mac a better browser at the time than was available for Windows. Office 2001 introduced some new features, and then Office v.X brought the productivity suite to the shiny happy land of OS X. Bugs were ironed out for Office 2004, and that's where we've been ever since.

Office 2004 wasn't bad per se, but the switch to Intel has been painful for Office users. The applications were not universal binaries, which meant they had to run in under emulation in Rosetta. All that has changed, however, with the release of Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

The MBU has been hard at work on the first new Office for Mac release in four years, and one that's been designed to take on Apple's iWork apps. Although the programs are still Carbon, rather than Cocoa, they now combine the look-and-feel of OS X 10.5 with some of the innovations Microsoft introduced in Office 2007, like the ribbon.

In the following review, I'm going to take a brief look at the Office 2008 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage to give you an idea of how the MBU has spent the past few years.

Installation

Unlike past versions of Office, where installing was almost as simple as dragging and dropping the folder into Applications, Office 2008 has an actual installer. Once the applications are installed on your hard drive, the installer then searches for previous versions and handily removes them for you. Any existing Office identities (i.e., your settings and e-mail) will then be migrated, but the existing data is not deleted. So if you decide you don't like the future, then you can revert back to living in 2004.